Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

“She thought it would be difficult to explain without involving me and I begged her not to do that. It would have been the end of everything, Matron. I want to take a district nurse training after I’m qualified so that I can look after Mummy. If I could get a country district we could have a cottage together and perhaps even a car. Mummy will be able to give up the store. I told Nurse Pearce about that. Besides, she said that Harper was so careless about money that it wouldn’t hurt her to learn a lesson. She sent the payments to the society for discharged prisoners because it seemed appropriate. After all, I might have gone to prison if she hadn’t shielded me.”

  The Matron said drily: “That, of course, is nonsense and you should have known it was nonsense. Nurse Pearce seems to have been a very stupid and arrogant young woman. Are you sure she wasn’t making any other demands on you? There is more than one kind of blackmail.”

  “But she wouldn’t do that, Matron!” Nurse Dakers struggled to lift her head from the pillow. “Pearce was … well, she was good.” She seemed to find the word inadequate and puckered her brow as if desperately anxious to explain.

  “She used to talk to me quite a lot and gave me a card with a passage out of the Bible which I had to read every day. Once a week she used to ask me about it.”

  The Matron was swept by a sense of moral outrage so acute that she had to find relief in action. She got up from the stool and walked over to the window, cooling her flaring face against the pane. She could feel her heart bumping and noticed with almost clinical interest that her hands were shaking. After a moment she came back again to the bedside.

  “Don’t talk about her being good. Dutiful, conscientious and well-meaning if you like, but not good. If ever you meet real goodness you will know the difference. And I shouldn’t worry about being glad that she is dead. In the circumstances you wouldn’t be normal if you felt differently. In time you may be able to pity her and forgive her.”

  “But Matron, it’s me who ought to be forgiven. I’m a thief.” Was there a suggestion of masochism in the whine of the voice, the perverse self-denigration of the born victim? Miss Taylor said briskly: “You’re not a thief. You stole once; that’s a very different thing. Every one of us has some incident in our lives that we’re ashamed and sorry about. You’ve recently learned something about yourself, about what you’re capable of doing, which has shaken your confidence. Now you have to live with that knowledge. We can only begin to understand and forgive other people when we have learned to understand and forgive ourselves. You won’t steal again. I know that, and so do you. But you did once. You are capable of stealing. That knowledge will save you from being too pleased with yourself, from being too self-satisfied. It can make you a much more tolerant and understanding person and a better nurse. But not if you go on indulging in guilt and remorse and bitterness. Those insidious emotions may be very enjoyable but they aren’t going to help you or anyone else.”

  The girl looked up at her. “Will the police have to know?” That, of course, was the question. And there could be only one answer.

  “Yes. And you will have to tell them, just as you’ve told me. But I shall have a word first with the Superintendent. He’s a new detective, from Scotland Yard this time, and I think he’s an intelligent and understanding man.”

  Was he? How could she possibly tell? That first meeting had been so brief, merely a glance and a touching of hands. Was she merely comforting herself with a fleeting impression that here was a man with authority and imagination who might be able to solve the mystery of both deaths with a minimum of harm to the innocent and guilty alike. She had felt this instinctively. But was the feeling rational? She believed Nurse Dakers’s story; but then she was disposed to believe it. How would it strike a police officer faced with a multiplicity of suspects but no other discernible motive? And the motive was there all right. It was Nurse Daker’s whole future, and that of her mother. And Dakers had behaved rather oddly. True, she had been most distressed of all the students when Pearce had died, but she had pulled herself together remarkably quickly. Even under the intense police questioning she had kept her secret safe. What then had precipitated this disintegration into confession and remorse? Was it only the shock of finding Fallon’s body? And why should Fallon’s death be so cataclysmic if she had had no hand in it?

  Miss Taylor thought again about Pearce. How little one really knew about any of the students. Pearce, if one thought about her at all, had typified the dull, conscientious, unattractive student who was probably using nursing to compensate for the lack of more orthodox satisfactions. There was usually one such in every nurse training school. It was difficult to reject them when they applied for training since they offered more than adequate educational qualifications and impeccable references. And they didn’t on the whole make bad nurses. It was just that they seldom made the best. But now she began to wonder. If Pearce had possessed such a secret craving for power that she could use this child’s guilt and distress as fodder for her own ego, then she had been far from ordinary or in effective. She had been a dangerous young woman.

  And she had worked it all out very cleverly. By waiting a week until she could be reasonably certain that the money had been spent, she had left Dakers no option. The child could hardly claim then that she had yielded to a sudden impulse but intended to return the money. And even if Dakers had decided to confess, perhaps to the Matron, Nurse Harper would have had to be told: Pearce would have seen to that. And only Harper could decide whether or not to prosecute. It might have been possible to influence her, to persuade her to mercy. But suppose it had not been possible? Nurse Harper would almost certainly have confided in her father, and the Matron couldn’t see Mr. Ronald Harper showing mercy to anyone who had helped herself to his money. Miss Taylor’s acquaintance with him had been brief but revealing. He had arrived at the hospital two days after Pearce’s death, a large, opulent-looking and aggressive man, top-heavy in his fur-lined motoring coat. Without preliminaries or explanation he had launched into his prepared tirade, addressing the Matron as if she were one of his garage hands. He wasn’t going to let his girl stay another minute in a house with a murderer at large, police or no police. This nurse training had been a damn fool idea in the first place, and now it was going to stop. His Diane didn’t need a career anyway. She was engaged, wasn’t she? A bloody good match too! His partner’s son. They could put the marriage forward instead of waiting until the summer and, in the meantime, Diane could stay at home and help in the office. He was taking her away with him now, and he’d like to see anyone try to stop him.

  No one had stopped him. The girl had made no objection. She had stood meekly in the Matron’s office overtly demure, but smiling a little as if gratified by all the fuss, by her father’s assertive masculinity. The police could not prevent her leaving, nor had they seemed concerned to try. It was odd, thought the Matron, that no one had seriously suspected Harper; and if the two deaths were the work of one hand, their instinct had been right. She had last seen the girl stepping into her father’s immense and ugly car, legs spindly beneath the new fur coat he had bought her to compensate for her disappointment at cutting short her training, and turning to wave good-bye to the rest of the set like a film star condescending to her assembled fans. No, not a particularly attractive family. Miss Taylor would be sorry for anyone who was in their power. And yet, such were the vagaries of personality, Diane Harper had been an efficient nurse, a better nurse in many ways than Pearce.

  But there was one more question which had to be asked, and it took her a second to summon the courage to ask it.

  “Did Nurse Fallon know about this business?”

  The girl answered at once, confident, a little surprised. “Oh no, Matron! At least I don’t think so. Pearce swore that she wouldn’t tell a soul, and it wasn’t as if she was particularly friendly with Fallon. I’m sure she wouldn’t have told Fallon.”

  “No,” said the Matron. “I don’t suppose she would.”

  Gently she lifted Nurse Da
kers’s head and smoothed the pillows.

  “Now I want you to try and get some sleep. You’ll feel a great deal better when you wake up. And try not to worry.”

  The girl’s face relaxed. She smiled up at the Matron and, putting out her hand, briefly touched Miss Taylor’s face. Then she snuggled down into the sheets as if resolute for sleep. So that was all right. But of course it was. It always worked. How easy and how insidiously satisfying was this doling out of advice and comfort, each portion individually flavoured to personal taste! She might be a Victorian vicar’s wife presiding over a soup kitchen. To each according to her need. It happened in the hospital every day. A ward sister’s brightly professional voice. “Here’s Matron to see you, Mrs. Cox. I’m afraid Mrs. Cox isn’t feeling quite so well this morning, Matron.” A tired pain-racked face smiling bravely up from the pillow, mouth avid for its morsel of affection and reassurance. The Sisters bringing their problems, the perpetual unsolvable problems over work and incompatible personalities.

  “Are you feeling happier about it now, Sister?”

  “Yes, thank you, Matron. Much happier.”

  The Group Secretary, desperately coping with his own inadequacies.

  “I should feel better if we could have just a word about the problem, Matron.” Of course he would! They all wanted to have just a word about the problem. They all went away feeling better. Hear what comfortable words our Matron saith. Her whole working life seemed a blasphemous liturgy of reassurance and absolution. And how much easier both to give and to accept was this bland milk of human kindness than the acid of truth. She could imagine the blank incomprehension, the resentment with which they would greet her private credo.

  “I haven’t anything to offer. There isn’t any help. We are all alone, all of us from the moment of birth until we die. Our past is our present and our future. We have to live with ourselves until there isn’t any more time left. If you want salvation look to yourself. There’s nowhere else to look.”

  She sat for a few more minutes and then quietly left the room. Nurse Dakers gave a brief valedictory smile. As she entered the corridor she saw Sister Brumfett and Mr. Courtney-Briggs coming out of his patient’s room. Sister Brumfett bustled up.

  “I’m sorry, Matron. I didn’t know you were on the ward.” She always used the formal title. They might spend the whole of their off-duty together driving or golfing; they might visit a London show once a month with the cosy, boring regularity of an old married couple; they might drink their early morning tea and late night hot milk together in indissoluble tedium. But in the hospital Brumfett always called her Matron. The shrewd eyes searched hers.

  “You’ve seen the new detective, the man from the Yard?”

  “Only briefly. I’m due for a session with him as soon as I get back.”

  Mr. Courtney-Briggs said: “I know him as a matter of fact; not well but we have met. You’ll find him reasonable and intelligent. He’s got quite a reputation of course. He’s said to work very quickly. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a considerable asset. The hospital can stand only so much disruption. He’ll want to see me I suppose, but he’ll have to wait. Let him know that I’ll pop across to Nightingale House when I’ve finished my ward round, will you, Matron?”

  “I’ll tell him if he asks me,” replied Miss Taylor calmly. She turned to Sister Brumfett.

  “Nurse Dakers is calmer now, but I think it would be better if she were not disturbed by visitors. She’ll probably manage to get some sleep. I’ll send over some magazines for her and some fresh flowers. When is Dr. Snelling due to see her?”

  “He said he would come in before lunch, Matron.”

  “Perhaps you would ask him to be good enough to have a word with me. I shall be in the hospital all day.”

  Sister Brumfett said: “I suppose that Scotland Yard detective will want to see me too. I hope he isn’t going to take too long about it. I’ve got a very sick ward.”

  The Matron hoped that Brum wasn’t going to be too difficult. It would be unfortunate if she thought she could treat a Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police as if he were a recalcitrant House Surgeon. Mr. Courtney-Briggs, no doubt, would be his usual arrogant self, but she had a feeling that Superintendent Dalgliesh would be able to cope with Mr. Courtney-Briggs.

  They walked to the door of the ward together. Miss Taylor’s mind was already busy with fresh problems. Something would have to be done about Nurse Dakers’s mother. It would be some years before the child was fully qualified as a district nurse. In the meantime she must be relieved of the constant anxiety about her mother. It might be helpful to have a word with Raymond Grout. There might be a clerical job somewhere in the hospital which would suit her. But would that be fair? One couldn’t indulge one’s own urge to help at someone else’s expense. Whatever problems of staff recruitment the hospital service might have in London, Grout had no difficulty in filling his clerical jobs. He had a right to expect efficiency; and the Mrs. Dakers of this world, dogged by their own inadequacy as much as by ill-luck, could seldom offer that. She supposed she would have to telephone the woman; the parents of the other students too. The important thing was to get the girls out of Nightingale House. The training schedule couldn’t be disrupted; it was tight enough as it was. She had better arrange with the House Warden for them to sleep in the Nurses’ Home—there would be room enough with so many nurses in the sick bay—and they could come over each day to use the library and lecture room. And then there would be the Vice-Chairman of the Hospital Management Committee to consult and the Press to cope with, the inquest to attend and the funeral arrangements to be discussed. People would be wanting to get in touch with her continually. But first, and most important, she must see Superintendent Dalgliesh.

  BOOK FOUR

  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

  1

  The Matron and Sisters had their living-quarters on the third floor of Nightingale House. When he reached the top of the staircase Dalgliesh saw that the south-west wing had been cut off from the rest of the landing by a specially constructed partition in white-painted wood in which a door, meanly proportioned and insubstantial in contrast to the high ceiling and oak-lined walls, bore the legend “Matron’s Flat”. There was a bell push, but before pressing it he briefly explored the corridor. It was similar to the one below but fitted with a red carpet which, although faded and scuffed, gave an illusion of comfort to the emptiness of this upper floor.

  Dalgliesh moved silently from door to door. Each bore a hand-written name card slotted into the brass holder. He saw that Sister Brumfett occupied the room immediately adjacent to the Matron’s flat. Next was a bathroom, functionally divided into three mean cubicles, each with its bath and lavatory. The slot on the next door bore Sister Gearing’s name; the next two rooms were empty. Sister Rolfe was at the north end of the corridor immediately next to the kitchen and utility room.

  Dalgliesh had no authority to enter any of the bedrooms but he tentatively turned the handles on each of the doors. As he expected, they were locked.

  The Matron herself opened the door of her flat to him within seconds of his ring, and he followed her into the sitting-room. Its size and magnificence caught the breath. It occupied the whole of the south-west turret, an immense white-painted octagonal room, the ceiling starred in patterns of gold and pale blue, and with two huge windows facing out towards the hospital. One of the walls was lined from ceiling to floor with white bookcases. Dalgliesh resisted the impertinence of walking casually towards them in the hope of assessing Miss Taylor’s character by her taste in literature. But he could see from where he stood that there were no textbooks, no bound official reports or sloping banks of files. This was a living-room, not an office.

  An open fire burnt in the grate, the wood still crackling with its recent kindling. It had as yet made no impression on the air of the room which was cold and very still. The Matron was wearing a short scarlet cape over her grey dress. She had taken off her head-dress and the huge coi
l of yellow hair lay like a burden on the frail, etiolated neck.

  She was fortunate, he thought, to have been born in an age which could appreciate individuality of feature and form, owing everything to bone structure and nothing to the gentle nuances of femininity. A century ago she would have been called ugly, even grotesque. But today most men would think her interesting, and some might even describe her as beautiful. For Dalgliesh she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met.

  Placed precisely in the middle of the three windows was a sturdy oak table bearing a large black-and-white telescope. Dalgliesh saw that this was no amateur’s toy but an expensive and sophisticated instrument. It dominated the room. The Matron saw his eyes upon it and said: “Are you interested in astronomy?”

  “Not particularly.”

  She smiled. “‘Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie’?”

  “Discomforts rather than terrifies. It’s probably my vanity. I can’t interest myself in anything which I not only don’t understand but know that I have no prospect of ever understanding.”

  “That for me is the attraction. It’s a form of escapism, even of voyeurism, I suppose—this absorption in an impersonal universe which I can’t do anything to influence or control and, better still, which no one expects me to. It’s an abdication of responsibility. It restores personal problems to their proper proportion.”

  She motioned Dalgliesh towards the black leather sofa in front of the fire. Before it, a low table held a tray with a coffee percolator, hot milk, crystal sugar and two cups.

  As he seated himself, he smiled and said: “If I want to indulge in humility or speculate on the incomprehensible, I prefer to look at a primrose. The expense is nugatory, the pleasure is more immediate, and the moral just as valid.”

  The mobile mouth mocked him.

  “And at least you restrict your indulgence in these dangerous philosophical speculations to a few short weeks in the spring.”